This is the kind of story that drives people to change the subject or cross the street when they see the teller coming. In 1949, author Dorothy Foltz-Gray and her identical twin sister, Deane, were born. In 1981, Deane, then a psychologist, was fatally shot by one of her patients. In the years between, the pair formed an almost supernaturally close bond, one so intimate that at times their memories fused and their individual identities dimmed.

Here, Foltz-Gray, an award-winning poet and journalist, recounts the phenomenon of growing up in a world that could not distinguish her from another human being and the struggle to survive the loss of her twin. Foltz-Gray describes the imagined womb life she and her sister shared, their childhood, and details the nightmare of her sister’s death.